The BarberShop with Shantanu How to Build a ₹150 Crore Women's Grooming Brand | Bombae
Jun 12, 2026
A founder unpacks how a single user insight turned into a ₹150 Cr women's grooming brand. He rejects the pink-razor stereotype and explains why safety was the wrong problem to solve. The talk covers real differences in women's shaving feedback and the design thinking behind a tactile Roll Blade. It ends with lessons on positioning a new brand and insight-led product growth.
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Why Bombae Started As An Impossible Idea
- Shantanu recounts how launching a women's brand felt impossible because Bombay Shaving Company was a men's shaving brand.
- COVID pushed female employees to ask why there was no women's product, sparking research that overturned assumptions about women's shaving needs.
Pink Razors Miss The Real Problem
- Existing women's razors were just men's products recolored and marked up, based on the false belief women needed 'safe' or softer blades.
- Research found women are more evolved shavers with different stroke length, hair density, and no visual/sonic/tactile feedback when shaving.
Feedback, Not Softness, Is The Core Need
- Women lack the three shaving feedbacks men get: visual, sonic, and tactile, because they shave areas out of sight, quietly, and can't feel small hairs.
- This absence of feedback makes long strokes fail when hair jams the blade, so feedback design is the core need.